


all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them

by strikethesun



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Multi, Vignettes, Whump, nobody dies in this but like we all know what's coming up, overdependence on leonard cohen lyrics for setting the mood, thoughts of murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28096851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikethesun/pseuds/strikethesun
Summary: forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.Choice vignettes in the life of one first mate Starbuck: two meetings with Ishmael on the deck, a dream, and a nightmare.
Relationships: Starbuck/Mary Starbuck (Moby Dick), background Ishmael/Queequeg, implied/past Starbuck/Ahab
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eccentric_Hat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eccentric_Hat/gifts).



Starbuck approached the young man staring idly out at the waves. Had he been that young man once? Catching a glimpse of the back of his own hand as he rested it on the railing, both worn and lined with care, he was compelled to doubt it. At this point in the voyage, though, he figured he should know everyone’s names, and yet here was one that managed to evade him. Before he could open his mouth to speak, the young man turned to him. 

“Ah, first mate Starbuck.”

Starbuck cleared his throat. “Uh, yes, and you are…?”   


The young man seemed startled at first, before a smile grew across his face. “Call me Ishmael. I apologize for not introducing myself sooner.”

Starbuck was struck by the way he said  _ “call me”  _ and not  _ “my name is”  _ or  _ “oh, hey, I’m Ishmael,”  _ but decided against launching an interrogation on the topic. “No worries, Ishmael. Just taking a moment to check in on the crew, especially its younger members. How goes it?”

Ishmael scratched at a spot on the railing where the paint was beginning to chip. “It goes decently, I think. Just trying to learn the ropes as quickly as possible. Literally.” He paused. “For lack of better phrasing, I had grown somewhat accustomed to at least  _ feeling  _ like I  _ could  _ be the smartest person in the room, but here I know that to be objectively false. My Queequeg—er,  _ Queequeg _ , I could watch him tie knots all day.” Ishmael turned, as though to hide an expanding blush. “I never realized how much goes into this whole operation before now.” 

Starbuck pretended not to notice Ishmael’s verbal slip nor his newly pink cheeks. “It’s humbling, isn’t it? I feel like I know who I am at home, and yet every time I come out here I’m reminded that…” He frowned, watching a gull dive towards the water. “I don’t know; I suppose it’s like being reminded of just how little I really know about anything.”

Ishmael nodded vigorously. “Yes. Yes, it’s exactly like that.”

* * *

Starbuck was startled to see Ishmael out on the deck as well; he figured that at this dark, cold hour, everyone else on the Pequod would be passed out in their hammocks. But the moonlight glinting off of his blond hair made Ishmael easily distinguishable even in the middle of the night. Starbuck approached him hesitantly.

“Ishmael.” When Ishmael jumped, Starbuck cleared his throat and leaned on the railing in an attempt to seem more approachable, but considering how stiff all of his muscles had been for the past several weeks, he wasn’t sure if such a thing was possible anymore. “Sorry to startle you. Just wondering what keeps you up tonight, if you don’t mind sharing.”

Ishmael grinned. “It’s a little personal, actually, but…I think I’m in love, sir.”

Starbuck successfully held back a knowing chuckle. “That’s lovely to hear.” Without thinking, he broke through the barrier both were slightly afraid to cross—“Can’t stop thinking about him?”

At  _ him,  _ Ishmael started, but then immediately relaxed when he saw Starbuck’s smile. “ _ Yes.  _ It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world. I’ve been convinced of this love for a while now, but I was just, uh, lying next to him, sir, and I felt it so strongly that I got a sudden urge to get out here and  _ share  _ it with the world. Does that make any sense?”   


It made  _ so _ much sense to Starbuck, in fact, that his eyes welled up with tears as images of his younger self flashed before them—the first time he saw Mary outside the Friends’ meetinghouse, holding his son as an infant (but not as a newborn), a quick embrace between himself and a gentler Ahab, the moment when he saw any last trace of gentleness leave Ahab’s eyes, cradling his captain and his companion as he clutched what was left of his leg and moaned in agony. He thought about his captain now, and how just a couple hours ago he had found himself in an argument of the sort he hadn’t thought the two of them were capable of, and he wondered whether there was any hope of rekindling the love they had once shared. 

At least he still had Mary—if there was still hope of avoiding Ahab’s death-seeking mission, too.

“Uh, sir?”   


Starbuck sighed. “Sorry, Ishmael. It makes complete and total sense. I was just, ah, lost in thought about it.” For a moment he seriously considered telling this young, insecure sailor that relationships of the sort he described were quite common and acceptable among the waves, though he figured that any sailor would already know that. “Yes, you put that beautifully. Though I suppose it helps neither of us to sit and pine out in the cold when we have work to do tomorrow, right?”

Ishmael pushed himself off of the railing he had been leaning on. “Right, sir, of course. I was just about to head back, actually.” He took a couple steps towards the cabin before pausing and turning back to Starbuck. “Have a good night, sir.”

“You too, Ishmael. See you in the morning.”

Starbuck wasn’t quite sure how much more time he spent out there, but by the time he left, light was just beginning to dance over the horizon, painting the waves with reds and purples and hints of gold. 

* * *

“Mary."

“What is it?”

Starbuck sat upright in bed. 

“Is everything ok?”

He reached out towards his wife’s voice and found a familiar warmth. “Yes. I think I was just dreaming about the voyage again.”

Mary sighed as she sat up next to him and threw an arm over his shoulder. “You know you can talk about it if you ever want to. I won’t try to coax anything out of you because I know that there’s no point, but you don’t have to worry about  _ burdening _ me or anything. I’m strong enough to hear it, no matter how ghastly.”

“I did what I had to do. Nothing more, nothing less.”   


“I know,” Mary murmured. “Everyone knows that. What happened to that man comes as no surprise to any of us, honestly.”

Starbuck pulled away.  _ That man.  _ “Oh, has there been gossip? Plenty of it _ , _ and yet no one to step in and say ‘hey, maybe we  _ shouldn’t  _ let him lead another voyage so soon?’”

“It’s not like you did, either,” she bristled. “Don’t try to guilt-trip  _ me  _ when you know as well as I do that I couldn’t have accomplished much. Besides, how is that even my responsibility in the first place? He was  _ your _ friend, and he was more than that, too, now wasn’t he? If you’re in any way afraid for the sake of your immortal soul, I think that you’ll have more to answer for than  _ justified _ murder.”

_ No. No, that’s not how it would go, it would be like: _

Mary embraced him and whispered in his ear, too quiet for their son to hear: “I’m proud of you. You saved so many lives.”

Starbuck whispered in turn: “It didn’t feel that way at the time. But we’ll talk about this later.  _ I love you. _ ”

Suddenly his boy’s scrawny arms were around his neck, and Starbuck was smiling and nodding and all he could say was “oh, yes, mm-hmm,” as his son enthusiastically filled him in on everything he had missed: his studies, his new technique for running  _ really  _ fast and never running out of breath, his new friends at school, the girl across the street who always gave him the biggest grin. Eventually Mary stepped in to save him from the boy’s incessant ranting, but Starbuck would have done everything over again if it meant being in this moment once more, basking in the glow of his son’s excitement and love.

Once the boy had left the room, Starbuck embraced his wife again. “ _ That’s  _ why I’ve chosen to try to live without regretting what I’ve done. This, too,” he said before kissing her.

Mary combed through his hair with her fingers. “It’s ok if you can’t always achieve that. It’s ok if it doesn’t always feel like you’ve done the right thing. I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for you.”

“Hard,” Starbuck sighed, “but worth it. I don’t know if I can live with myself, but I know that I have to, for the love of you and our son.”

Mary wrapped her arms around his chest and squeezed.. “And whenever it’s hard, I’m here. God forgives because of how much we love.”

Starbuck awoke to a drop of water from a tiny leak in the ceiling landing directly on his face. He took quick stock of his surroundings—still quite obviously the Pequod, the familiar rocking of the waves instantly bringing him back to current events—he had  _ not  _ killed Ahab—he had let his conscience take ahold of him, like a coward—either that or like the bravest of men— which likely meant he was never returning home, never going to hold his wife and child again. 

The room was still dark, and yet somewhere outside his door he could have sworn he heard a voice offering affection, commitment, and sacrifice up to the very end, no matter what happened, and a similar response in a now-familiar accent.

_ Ishmael. Queequeg. Some part of them will live; it simply has to. _

  
_ there are heroes in the seaweed. there are children in the morning. they are leaning out towards love and they will lean that way forever. — leonard cohen,  _ suzanne


End file.
